ABSTRACT
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Charles Handy (2002,50) opined:
The American disease is not just a matter of dubious personal ethics or of some rogue companies fudging the odd billion. The country's whole business culture may have become distorted. This was the culture that enraptured America for a generation, a culture underpinned by a doctrine that proclaimed the market king, always gave priority to the shareholder, and believed that business was the key engine of progress and thus should take precedence in policy decisions.
Why did this so-called American disease arise? To what extent was business education responsible? And what are the implications of changing this perspective to something broader that works for all stakeholders, societies, and future generations? Arguably, the problems of management and business education are not about bad apples or even bad companies. They are about a system that puts inordinate and narrowly defined performance pressures on managers and their companies (cf. Cavanagh et al. 2002). Company leaders focused narrowly on shareholder considerations are not likely to make decisions in the best interest of other stakeholders and the societies within which they operate, and may even shortchange shareholders (Collins and Porras 1996).